Tails of Beauty

Tailing loops are very frustrating. Some of us suffer them mildly once in a while, for others it is a chronic illness. I know of an experienced fly fisher that produces a tailing loop almost on every cast. A fellow angler told me not long ago that I was obssesed with tailing loops. That could be the case, but I don’t mind. I am interested in tails because I see them recurrently in most of my classes, and think that the more I understand them the more effective I will be in helping to cure them.

But my fellow could be right, why to focus so much in tails? Are they that bad? Those big enough to cross legs are prone to knots, and a wave big enough can send the fly to some unexpected places during the presentation… but probably only if they are combined with the legs of the loop being in different planes. More subtle tailing loops —specially when both legs share the same plane— are probably harmless most of the time.

But guess what? I fly fish due to its esthetics, and a straight fly line unrolling is a flying beauty. That tailing loop above is the exception that proves the rule.

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7 comments on “Tails of Beauty”

I and curious about, “but probably only if they are combined with the legs of the loop being in different planes.” Can you expand further on why a “tailing loop” in different planes, for example, during a Belgian cast will necessarily be inaccurate?

Will a Belgian Cast in which the fly leg and rod leg do not cross in the virtual vertical plane, be more accurate than one in which they do cross in the virtual vertical plane although they are separated in the horizontal plane? Does the accuracy depend on the amount of the virtual cross?

Hence the backcast and forward cast are not in the same vertical or horizontal plane. A tailing loop where the fly leg dips below the rod leg leg will rarely hook the rod leg because the legs are separated horizontally.

Yes, I know what a belgian cast is. In fact it isn’t belgian, it came from Hans Gebetsroither, the famous austrian fly fisher.
That link to Sexyloops doesn’t work, so I don’t know if I am missing something else.
“A tailing loop where the fly leg dips below the rod leg leg will rarely hook the rod leg because the legs are separated horizontally.”
That is a good point. In a big tracking fault both legs are separated horizontally, however the fly leg can go all the way from the left side of the caster to his right side; add a tailing loop to that and tell me if it hooks the rod leg or not: